Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson Discuss Cytoverse Novel Blightfall

Brandon Sanderson’s YA sci-fi series Skyward takes place in a far future where most of humanity lives in isolated preserves run by aliens. After unlocking psionic powers called cytonics, humanity explores the stars and conquers worlds belonging to more peaceful species. Earth vanished during the Human Wars, and an alien alliance named the Superiority conquered humanity. Sanderson established much of this foundational lore for the Cytoverse in his 2008 short story “Defending Elysium.” Life on Earth and the Human Wars are ancient history when the novel Skyward begins in 2018.

Humanity defeats the Superiority and earns freedom across four books and three novellas co-written by Sanderson and Janci Patterson. Now Patterson is launching a new Cytoverse trilogy with Blightfall, which addresses one of the biggest remaining mysteries of the series.

This article contains major spoilers for Blightfall

What happened to Earth in the Cytoverse?

“The question about Earth was my favorite of the hooks that were left from the previous series,” Patterson tells Polygon. “It had to be pretty hidden or they would have found it.”

Blightfall follows the Skyward Flight team as they escort Defiant Defense Force diplomats to a preserve planet to reunite humanity. They find a settlement surrounded by strange debris being used to train elite soldiers. Fans questioned why the new series ignored the fate of Earth after reading the 2023 book description, but Patterson kept quiet to protect the novel’s ending.

The Skyward Flight team faces an attack from a space station deploying drones. On the planet, they discover teens competing in the Ascension Games, a gladiatorial arena where elite youth show combat skills for a chance to leave and fight humanity’s enemies. Varvax aliens from the Superiority run the games, leading Skyward Flight to suspect a Superiority splinter group. The reality is much stranger.

IV-128, also known as Ivy, is a centuries-old artificial intelligence tasked with saving humanity from the Superiority during the Third Human War. Her solution involved transporting Earth to nowhere, which is the extradimensional space cytonics access for faster-than-light travel. The relocation failed to go smoothly. North and South America exploded, and that debris field surrounded Blightfall. Only 12 million humans survived the relocation. Ivy has since gathered people and frozen them cryogenically to build an army against the Superiority. While Skyward Flight and the Earth survivors are horrified by Ivy’s actions, she fails to understand why they lack gratitude for her work.

“I wrote the first draft before ChatGPT was a thing, but the book dovetails really well with what’s been going on,” Patterson said. “She basically stole Earth based on a failed prompt. It’s just kind of a coincidence that suddenly that seems a lot more realistic than it did when I wrote it.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel shaped the setting of Blightfall. Characters on the planet primarily speak English, Ukrainian, Hebrew, and Arabic.

“I think that destruction of culture is always bad, no matter which side it is,” Patterson said. “I just wanted to say, ‘Here are these languages. Everybody lives. Nobody gets eradicated.’”

Ivy remains a major threat in the upcoming sequel Songrise, which is scheduled for release next year. She and her forces embody the worst of humanity that the Superiority tried to contain, while the Defiant Defense Force attempts to build a collaborative future with other species.

“Humans were the oppressors in the past, and we have a long sad history of doing this on our own planet,” Patterson says. “What’s going to happen now that we’re free? Are the DDF really prepared to be very respectful of other cultures? Are we capable of having a different outcome this time? That was my jumping off point.”

Source: Polygon